Debbie Mueller (born 14 June 1959) is an American middle and long-distance runner who won many major road races in the 1980s and 1990s, including the Dublin Marathon.
[3][4] The same year, Mueller finished third for women in Massachusetts' famed 7-mile Falmouth Road Race.
[8] Mueller's track times earned her a place at the 1981 Saucony National Championship Woman's 10K run in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Mueller won multiple road races throughout the East Coast[1] and gained professional sponsorships.
The race organizers prided themselves on hosting a marathon that ran through grittier neighborhoods, over tough hills, and along the Dublin Bay—with hollering spectators at nearly every section of the course.
The same year, she finished sixth in the 10th running of the Iowa Bix 7 Road Race, which was won by Joan Benoit.
She traveled to Albany, New York again for the Freihofer's Run for Women, where she ran her personal record for a 10K: 34:26, putting her at 18th in a stacked field.
The trials took place on the roads of Olympia, Washington in May, where 238 women would race some of the fastest times the nation had seen.
[17][18] She decided to travel to the Midwest in September 1984 for a marathon that was emerging as a fast, competitive race through the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.
The Twin Cities Marathon had a prize purse for winners, lots of spectators, and good scenery throughout the lakeside and Mississippi River gorge roads.
The competition was steep: Kersti Jakobsen and Mele Holm-Hansen from Denmark, local favorites Janis Klecker and Beverly Docherty, Canadian Susan Kainulainen, and Oregonian Debbie Eide.
She crested Summit Avenue and won first place in a personal best time of 2:34:50 on a day that saw Fred Torneden run the fastest marathon of any American in 1984.
[1] In her later career, Mueller continued to compete at larger New England races, setting course records (like at the Yankee Homecoming 10-mile)[26] and winning open and masters categories.
[28][21] Both of the Muellers ran races together for the Boston Athletic Association and, together, they held a record for the world's fastest father-daughter combined marathon times.